Incarnations
by xheartmehorrid
Summary: [ Ryuhou x Kazuma ] A strange conversation about reincarnation.


Incarnations

Disclaimed.

xx

He sat beneath the stars. His hands were gnarled and burned and leather sand. He pricked his finger on Orion's Belt and believed he was Aurora and he bled the way Aurora bled and his fingertips were roses and his lips were vampire lips and he never believed in magic but he just might have been cursed. The broken mountains in the distance were collapsed like broken glass and rocks and flowers and the minerals inside them clawed the surface of the world from underground. He sat beside Him underneath the stars and He was beautiful.

He was Shmendrick and Merlin and a magician and the devil and His eyes had been the fall of Eden and His heart as old as all the secret chasms buried gaping in the earth. But Kazuma did not believe in magic and he did not believe in magicians and fuck being cursed because he did not believe in curses: but it was possible that he had trapped Him with one of His own spells because He sat there and He didn't speak but the secrets were there.

Where, it didn't matter because their presence could be felt as tangible as any flesh.

His secrets though were darker than any flesh. He knew it and because He knew it He was beautiful.

'I had a dream.' He said. His voice sounded like he didn't care about his dream but he was going to talk about the dream to Him. He was the only one who'd listen. He was the only one who ever listened.

A sigh. 'Tell me about it, Kazuma.' He said - that sigh extinguished and weighed down so that it broke - and He laid back. His hair was a snakepit and the saddest smile was on His lips but it was only for a second - Kazuma gobbled up that second and remembered it and harbored it and maimed it and killed it and he wanted to kill himself for killing it - so then He just looked pensive and bored. But listening. Still listening.

'You were in it' he said. Blunt and bare and _Kazuma_. 'You died.'

He closed His Lucifer serpent Eden secrets eyes. He breathed. He waited.

'And.'

'I buried you out here in the Wasteland.' Kazuma smiles, introspectively. 'Under a pile of rocks.'

He sighs again. He does not know when He began to sigh so often or when the sighs began to replace breaths but now they do and the smile that He smiles is a strange one. 'Sounds about right' He says, and can feel it creeping up on Him how right he really is - even though He doesn't say that to Kazuma - and admits to Himself that maybe it scares Him even if nothing ever surprises Him anymore.

Kazuma looks away. Maybe up or maybe off into the distance - but away. He says, only a little softly: 'Then I wondered what I'd do without you. If you died, I mean.' Through his nose. Like it hurts. 'If I had to live without you.' Rattles out. And it's just sand and it won't hurt but the sand aches and his eyes and hands are scars. And just maybe it does.

'Maybe you would die afterwards and we'd be reincarnated again.' His voice was absent of remorse of romance of absence. He seemed to be musing ideas in His mind. Kazuma laughed.

'I don't believe in magic.'

He answers listlessly that 'Reincarnation isn't magic.'

Kazuma smiles because he still doesn't believe it .

'Who do you think we'd be?' he asks.

'Anonymous junkies. Cain and Able. Scarred. Bruised. Merlin and you'd capture me with my own spell. Kids. Adults. We'd die.' He frowns, squinting His eyes a little as His brows furrow. 'We would die every time and I would always hate you. Maybe one time we'd be brothers.' He still concentrates. 'Maybe lovers. I might kill you because I'd never believe that you could love me and then. . .we could start over.' He knows. 'That's the good thing about reincarnation.

Kazuma is thinking now. 'Who do you think I was before?'

'A dog.'

Kazuma wrinkles his nose. 'Smartass.'

Ryuhou smiles the first genuine smile that he has in a while and it still manages to look more like a smirk. 'And I was your owner. Or maybe you were my sister. A guy that I met in a nightclub. A friend.'

The smile isn't gobbled maimed murdered buried in a second because it's still there a second later. He says 'we died', like just another thing because it is, but maybe it isn't for Kazuma because he wants to live forever and sometimes he really believes he can.

It's still comforting to know that this will not be the last lifetime that they see each other because otherwise it doesn't seem like it'd be worth the wait.

Kazuma, though, asks the question at last.

'Who do you think I was first?'

And, as though looking at him for the first time, Ryuhou sees all the lines and gold in Kazuma's face and the way his hands are bound and scarred and the way his eyes are yellow beacons and the way he lives like this is the only life he's ever lived, and how now He - himself - is just he, and together they are he but maybe once it had been different, and maybe everything has changed and maybe nothing's ever changed and maybe it will always be the same for them. He almost thinks he sees the lion-claws on a rent black veil, the mountains rearing up with age and not with peaks like broken glass and ancient claws - the sword, impaled, and the wall which held them like the walls of death that seperated, and slaughter stained flowers blossoming against those same soft lips, and he wonders and he wonders but then he seems to know and it's like he is someone else but _they were always this way_.

Burying his face in the crook of his neck, hair matted and arm draped across and wishing that they'd never die because _this life is almost perfect_

But maybe one day they'll get it perfect

And all he says is _I'm sorry_.

xx

AN: Loose references to "Pyramus and Thisbe", two tragic lovers of Greek Mythology.


End file.
